November 5, 2007

That's the title of this Jeffrey Toobin piece in The New Yorker. I don't think that's a very accurate title and suspect his editor was hot to spread the Thomas-is-angry-meme. What concerns Toobin is Thomas's attachment to conservative politics. Here's the concluding paragraph (which you can see isn't about anger at all):

The tenor of Thomas’s memoir, as well as his judicial record, suggests that he will continue to display his brand of “courage”—that is, to serve the interests of a conservative élite, and hearten Vice-President Cheney and his ideological kin with his exhortation “Be not afraid.” As Thomas has often said, it is a credit to the country that a man from Pin Point can be given the opportunity to serve on the highest court in the land. “As a child, I could not dare dream that I would ever see the Supreme Court, not to mention be nominated to it,” he said on the day he was selected. There is less to celebrate in the way that Thomas has used the opportunity to speak power to truth.

""Grow Up Writers." Where is your compassion? I suggest you watch Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront" to get a clearer picture. Have you never quoted a line from Seinfield or SNL? Been touched or moved by a scene from a television movie, from Roots to the Sopranos to the War? Been educated by a show on history, health, or economics? These ARE real jobs, and they need your support. Their words make us smile, laugh, cry, and think. They are part of the American Dream, and they should be supported and respected for what they do."---LA Times

See, this is why being a heterosexual man is inconvenient sometimes. I have *no* idea what people who are actually attracted to men find attractive. If I could be gay just long enough to dress myself I'd probably do a lot better dating.

I agree with you revenant. It is difficult for me to understand what women find attractive and unattractive in men. I can tell at the far ends of the spectrum (Danny DeVito and Brad Pitt) but differentiating between men in everyday ranges is difficult.

I also think that the legend of the female orgasm is really just a feminist conspiracy designed to strike a blow at the male ego.

[These are] ``kindly'' people, most of whom take after a ``kindly'' parent or an aunt ``who had a dog that was almost human and understood every word that was said without being trained'' ... They often operate individually but inflict their greatest cruelties when amalgamated into societies. They easily recognize each other by their smiles, which are as dried syrup on yesterday's pancakes. Their most noticeable habits are wincing when dogs are effectively corrected and smiling approvingly when a dozen ineffective corrections seem only to fire a dog's maniacal attempts to hurl his anatomy within reach of another dog that could maim him in one brief skirmish. Their common calls are : ``I couldn't do that - I couldn't do that,'' and ``Oh myyyy - Oh myyy.'' They have no mating call. This is easily understood.

It's a Nietzchean anger, where dignity and significance is at stake.

Tubin can't train dogs, I'd guess.

Koehler's dog training book was banned in Arizona, which apparently had an influential New Yorker of its own around 1960.

"The opportunity to speak power to truth"?A cute inversion, but does it actually mean anything at all?

In any event, Toobin misunderstands power when he says the courage to speak unpopular truths, was telling some of the most powerful people in the worlds of government, business, and finance precisely what they wanted to hear.

No need to read further. Toobin simply declares his liberal bias by declaring that Thomas is wrong when affirmative action is so clearly good, that black people obviously want and need help, and government always does more good than harm.

No need to defend that string of liberal aphorisms, which apparently require considerable 'courage' to state, and restate, and teach, and indoctrinate, and publish, and elect, and mandate, because Lord knows you won't read those words anywhere else in the US.

Of course the whole article if full of "Toobinisms" i.e. phrases that are illogical, nonsensical, and defy rational analysis. But with "speaking power to truth" Toobin has outdid himself.

First, how does one speak "power" and who is "truth"? And don't all SCOTUS justices speak "power"? And what "Truth" is toobin referring to?

Of course, its supposed to be a "clever" inverse of the liberal phrase "speaking to truth to power". The problem is it isn't clever and it doesn't make any sense. Further, the original phrase itself made little sense, especially when spoken by people like Big Dan the Reporter Man.

Anyone ever seen a story about how angry Gore was? It's MSM liberal meme- conservatives are angry and unhinged and we,the MSM, must point that out to help the Dems get in and stay in power.

Here in Philly, the MSM writes story after story about what the Dems have to do to take over the row offices in the Philly suburbs. The next time the MSM writes a story about what the Reps have to do to win the mayor's race in Philly or the governmor's seat will be the first time.

Will Munny: I ain't like that no more. I ain't the same, Ned. Claudia, she straightened me up, cleared me of drinkin' whiskey and all. Just 'cause we're goin' on this killing, that don't mean I'm gonna go back to bein' the way I was. I just need the money, get a new start for them youngsters. Ned, you remember that drover I shot through the mouth and his teeth came out the back of his head? I think about him now and again. He didn't do anything to deserve to get shot, at least nothin' I could remember when I sobered up. Ned Logan: You were crazy, Will. Will Munny: Yeah, no one liked me. Mountain boys all thought I was gonna shoot 'em out of pure meanness. Ned Logan: Well, like I said, you ain't like that no more. Will Munny: That's right. I'm just a fella now. I ain't no different than anyone else no more.

If I could be gay just long enough to dress myself I'd probably do a lot better dating.

It is difficult for me to understand what women find attractive and unattractive in men.

Don't sweat it. Most women don't like meticulously groomed or styled men. It's off-putting when a man spends a lot of time on his personal appearance. That's our territory--who wants a man who acts like a woman?

(and keep in mind that the standards for looks and physical upkeep can be much higher for gay men than straight women)

Just be clean and not slobby and in reasonably good shape, and your probably OK with most women.

"Don't sweat it. Most women don't like meticulously groomed or styled men. It's off-putting when a man spends a lot of time on his personal appearance. That's our territory--who wants a man who acts like a woman? "

Toobin does the typical thing of suggesting that without affirmative action, Thomas would not be where he is today. Thus Thomas, and people who think like him, should be grateful, and support the very policies that allow Toobin to write awful pieces like this.

In essence Toobin is saying, "Thomas, you need affirmative action because you cannot succeed on your own, and white people on the whole are unable to act justly".

It's a low view of everyone's capabilities and human nature.

Toobin could have done a piece analyzing Thomas' actual judicial record, but that would be too much to ask. It's so much more convenient to reduce Thomas down to a racial policy symbol.

Oh, come off it, Luckyoldson. I think the use of the word in question is always wrong and never graceful. That was not my point, and you're not dumb enough not to realize it, or to have gotten the sour tone of my original comment.

I don't mean to lump you in with some of the b.s. in this comment section, but your defense of Fen is what the colleagues comment was about. His use of the term is definitely more offensive than either Tmink's or jack's despite the fact that its all pretty offensive.

I couldn't agree more. But I think there's a generational difference here.

I understand somewhat how the word has been used as among young blacks, perhaps as a way to defuse its totemic power. But that has led young white men in my city to use the word as if it's meaningless.

So it still offends some, grievously, but to others it is tossed off as a trifle. By the time my generation dies off, perhaps it's injurious quality will truly have dissolved away.

"That seems like a pretty serious revision of history"That would be if someone like myself said I was influenced by young blacks to use that word. I am old enough that I remember when NO ONE used it unless it was derogatory.

Unless your argument is that the young blacks wouldn't use that word had it not been for the white people using it 400 years ago up until people started being a little more enlightened, in which case you have a good point.

Not at all; it's happening now, and began in the 1980s. It's called "Rap music".Perhaps you have heard of it.

For example, the group NWA wasn't named after jets from Minnesota, and wasn't composed of white kids.

Or ask Bill Cosby:"His message to black people who say he's exposing the "dirty laundry" of the black community was blunt.

"Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day. It's cursing and calling each other 'n*****' as they're walking up and down the street. They think they hip -- can't read, can't write -- 50 percent of them," he said."

Did we read the same book? Have you ever noticed how sometimes the Cliff Notes are more interesting than the actual book? That's not the case here with this review. The books are much more interesting than Jeffery's reaction to them. Comports with a familiar American archtype -- James Gatz. Ha! Makes me laugh. Oh, dear. I feel another laughing spell coming on.

Back. That's exactly what an MA in literature would say, not that I'm accusing Jeffery of being one, and it takes this exact sort of élite Thomas describes to make that comparison. Thanks Jeffery, loon, for demonstrating how that élite thing works out in everyday life.

Isn't it a little naive to think that white people have ever stopped using that word. Obviously, it was a word that polite society had shunned but it never disappeared. You can admonish hip-hop using it but not for its invention. I'm old enough to have heard it out of the mouth of white people prior to its "rebirth" at the hands of hip-hop.

Now what I'm showing is how convenient it is to blame the word n**** on young black people. This scapegoating of black people for(I'm guessing) grown adults using that word in a discussion on this blog is pure folly. You could have chosen any number of reasons for the use of n**** in this forum, but blaming it on black people is the easiest way to pass the buck instead of blaming the white racists and bigots who invented and continue to deploy this word to denigrate. If anyone with brown skin was magically denied the ability to mouth the word n*****, it would still be used in millions of homes around this country.

This scapegoating of black people for(I'm guessing) grown adults using that word in a discussion on this blog is pure folly.I did nothing of the sort. I specifically cited young white men using this word not about blacks but about other white males in imitation of the rap/hip hop culture that uses the term in songs and videos. You cannot possibly be unaware of this fact.

I was remarking how offensive the word remains to the baby boomers, and how the word seems to have lost its punch among the younger crowd.

it would still be used in millions of homes around this country.Bullshit.

I dont blame Justice Thomas one bitfor the feminist nonsense and drivel that attended his elevation to a US Supreme Court Justice.However: I tell you Ann, someone suggested you pose in a tub with soap bubbles over your nipples on a videoblog. As far as I'm concerned, I'd like to see you on a videoblog nude...no tub or bubbles or whatever. Think you can arrange that ?

I believe it was in Hillary's autobiography that she and Bill woke up angry every morning for years--not at each other--but because of all the criticism and investigations. What sensible person would knowingly want to return to that kind of life?

Sure. That must be why I worked for Micheal Steele's Senate campaign last election. Moron.

Ohhhhh, that settles it. Fen, your logic is beyond even a decent argument. The only reason that you think that Democrats treat black peoples like n***** is because that's how you see them. There are so few African-Americans with even a smidgen of power within the entire Republican party that your claim doesn't even pass the laugh test.

The notion that African-Americans only vote for Democrats because of fear-mongering is sheer lunacy. The reason is that they see a Republican party that has used a Southern Strategy to unite white southerners against policies that might help black people. The reason is that they see a party that thinks that they are so stupid that they haven't judged between the two parties on merit rather than some racist "On the Democratic plantation" drivel.

This has nothing to do with an Angry Black Man stereotype. Clarence is truly embittered and angry about first being a victim of other black people because they called him ugly, then his sister for being on welfare, then I guess liberals as a whole because they viciously might have helped pave the way for his entry into Yale, then Anita Hill and his "high tech lynching" at the hands of Democrats fighting his nomination. These are common themes from his own retelling of his story. You cannot like Jeffrey, but its Clarence who keeps putting his bitterness and anger out on display.

The only reason that you think that Democrats treat black peoples like n***** is because that's how you see them.

You treat black people like shiftless, lazy ignoramuses who can't improve themselves, but must instead be "improved" by the governance of the well-meaning rich old white men who run the Democratic Party. You harshly attack any and all black people who reject that governance, usually using thinly-disguised (or completely undisguised) racist language to do so.

Is the n-word appropriate to describe the Democratic Party's view of blacks? Perhaps not. "Property" would probably be a more accurate description for how Democrats think of black Americans. The good ones get a pat on the head and the bad ones get the whip.

Rev: Is the n-word appropriate to describe the Democratic Party's view of blacks? Perhaps not. "Property" would probably be a more accurate description for how Democrats think of black Americans. The good ones get a pat on the head and the bad ones get the whip.